Synthetic Glossary by Elena Giglio Entries or abbreviations Field, quality or measure Definition or short explanation Adaptive system Physics System able to modify itself and to define its proper domain of environmental pertaining perturbation, specifying the admissibility of the different environmental constraints Alliance Phytosociology Taxonomic level superior to association Allometry Forestry The quantitative relation between the size of a part and the whole in a series of related organisms differing in size Association Phytosociology Vegetational— or plant: a plant community presenting a defined floristic composition in relation to specific climatic and edaphic conditions. It represents a vegetation type having a taxonomic name with the Latin suffix—etum Attractor Mathematics A geometrical object towards which the trajectory of a dynamic system converges in the course of time Biological spectrum Ecology The whole of the hierarchic levels of life organisation on Earth. Approached by four different points of view, completely and unified by landscape bionomics Biomass, plant Ecology pB. The dry weight or the volume above ground of the individuals of a plant species population in a given area Bionomics Bionomics Synonymous of “biological-integrated ecology.” The study of the biological- environmental laws of Nature as a complex system of hyper-complex systems BTC Bionomics [Mcal/m2/year] Biological territorial capacity of vegetation. The flux of energy that a system dissipates to maintain its equilibrium state and its organisational level. Proportional to the state of metastability of the system BTC Classes Bionomics (I to IX) Nine standard ranges of BTC values, corresponding to different sets of vegetation formations, available to indicate the landscape structure and functions CBSt Bionomics Concise bionomic state of vegetation. It relates the maturity level and the bionomic quality to check the bionomic efficiency of phytocoenosis (continued) V. Ingegnoli, Landscape Bionomics Biological-Integrated Landscape Ecology, 425 DOI 10.1007/978-88-470-5226-0, # Springer-Verlag Italia 2015 426 Synthetic Glossary Entries or abbreviations Field, quality or measure Definition or short explanation CLD Bionomics Complex landscape diversity. Synthetic index obtained by multiplying the three main biodiversity indexes (structural  functional  apparatus) of the landscape Complex LU Bionomics Interacting disposition of simple, recurring and structuring LU (see), the origin of which pertains to the same geomorphic group of processes Copying and... Biology The first portion of the processes necessary to beget a new living entity, related to hereditary characters for an individual, and to propagule banks and ecological memory for an ecocoenotope ...Coding Biology The second portion of the processes necessary to beget a new living entity, essential to transfer significance, not only information: they give the rules of semantics, of reciprocity, etc. to be applied to the copied genetic sequences or some landscape transformation processes to express the life Deterministic chaos Mathematics Non-random systems highly sensitive to initial conditions which lead to diverging outcomes Determinism Philosophy Principle establishing that the dynamic state of a system in a certain time is completely defined by its dynamic state at a given initial moment and by its interaction with the environment. Causality Dynamics (of a system) Physics, ecology System dynamics, or movement of a system. The shift of a system from a state condition A (at time t) to a state condition B (at time t1) within its proper space of the phases (that is its field of existence) Disturbance Ecology Synonymous with perturbation. A process, or event, able to direct the structuring of an ecological system and to be incorporated by it Ecocoenotope Bionomics Multifunctional entity, representing the elementary unit of integration of the community, the ecosystem and the microchore (spatial contiguity characters) in a definite geographic locality. Part of the territory that is uniform throughout its extent in landform, soil and vegetation. Tessera of the basic mosaic Ecoiatra Bionomics Physician of the living systems from the landscape level up to the whole Earth, expert connoisseur and researcher on their health state and on the Laws of Nature. To be understood in a Hippocratic sense (continued) Synthetic Glossary 427 Entries or abbreviations Field, quality or measure Definition or short explanation Ecological control of human Bionomics Control exerted in many cases—even culture when the process seems to have other origins, so trough an unconscious transmission of needs— on human culture, on human way of thinking or taking strategic decision (etc.), by natural Laws to balance some strong changes affecting directly or indirectly Nature itself Ecosystem Ecology Part of the ecocoenotope concerning the functional relations between its component communities and the abiotic factors of their environment Ecotissue Bionomics The ecological tissue of the landscape, as the weft and the warp in weaving or the cells in a histologic tissue. Multidimensional conceptual structure representing the hierarchical intertwining, in past, present and future, of the ecological upper and lower biological levels and of their relationships in the landscape Ecotissue model Bionomics The iterative integration of all the simple and complex mosaics (the vegetational one being the basis), of correlated arguments, bonds and information concerning the landscape, at different spatial and temporal scales, guided and hierarchically ordered by the biological laws governing each specific landscape Ecotope Bionomics The smallest unitary landscape element, multidimensional, that owns all the structural and functional characters and properties of the concerned landscape. Minimum system of interdependent ecocoenotopes determined by the topographical recurrence, the geomorphologic origin, the functional configuration and role within the landscape Emerging property principle Physics, bionomics Principle asserting that “...an organic whole/system (a living entity too) is more complex than the sum of its parts...” and that “...the characters of the system are the consequence of the way in which its elements organise themselves”. Already cited by EP Odum but not yet understood completely, becoming one of the mainstay of the scientific concept of landscape (continued) 428 Synthetic Glossary Entries or abbreviations Field, quality or measure Definition or short explanation Environmental rehabilitation Bionomics Updating of the concepts of sustainability strategy (of a status quo), mitigation and restoration (of a status quo ante) related to an human action in a landscape. It consists of the elaboration of a therapeutic course for a LU (or portion) —through the hierarchical compatibility and integration of landscape health needs and human needs—focused on the rehabilitation of one/more functions Epistemology Philosophy The study of the human knowledge. From the Greek episte¯me¯ (“knowledge”) and logos (“reason”). Along with metaphysics, logic and ethics, it is one of the four main branches of philosophy. In Europe mainly related with the philosophy of science (the) fittest vegetation (for...) Bionomics The most suitable or suited vegetation to the specific climate and geomorphic conditions of a certain, limited, period of time in a certain defined place, for the main range of incorporable disturbances (including man’s), in natural and not natural conditions. Patchy in a landscape HH Bionomics Human habitat. Area when human populations live and work permanently, limiting the self-regulation capability of natural systems. Limited to human and semi-human LU, ecotopes and apparatuses, may contain a small percentages of natural habitat. Not to be intended and measured as in geographical and urban planning sense Incompressible information Mathematics The term “information” might be misleading, as it depends on the concept of “compressibility.” In the Algorithmic Information Theory, the information content of a string is equivalent to the length of the shortest possible “self- contained representation” (i.e. a program) of that string. Following this theory, the complex specified information (CSI) is the “incompressible” information, which cannot be synthetised in a more simple form or rule Integration (hierarchical) Bionomics Combination of data, simple and complex elements, models and information related to a living system, ordered on the biological basis of their different degree of importance within a defined contest. For each system it need its history + its scale + its context to be known (continued) Synthetic Glossary 429 Entries or abbreviations Field, quality or measure Definition or short explanation LaBiSF Bionomics Landscape bionomic survey of fauna. The new bionomic method proposed to study the animal component, currently seeing as two cornerstones: the study of faunal sensitivity and the study for SHf, similar to what is already in depth for human populations LaBiSHH Bionomics The new bionomic method to analyse the main components and characters linked with the concept of human habitat LaBiSV Bionomics Landscape bionomic survey of vegetation. The new bionomic methodology able to determine the state of normality of the ecological parameters of different types of vegetation, to compare the ecological status of natural and man-made vegetated tesserae and to measure the concept of biodiversity at the landscape level (diversity of biological organisation of